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Bear With Me · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Everyone wants to be first, the first in line,
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  Speaker 1: the first to tweet about a popular movie, the first
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  Speaker 1: to leave a comment on a YouTube video, usually by
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  Speaker 1: simply typing the word first. But there's a smaller club
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  Speaker 1: of people who found themselves in the right place at
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  Speaker 1: the right time, giving them a chance to be the
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  Speaker 1: very first to experience something foundational, something most people take
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  Speaker 1: for granted. And George was one of those people. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I could tell you that George was born in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty five in Michigan. I could tell you that he
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  Speaker 1: graduated from the United States Military Academy and received a
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  Speaker 1: pH d from JOHNS. Hopkins in eighteen ninety three. I
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  Speaker 1: could tell you all sorts of biographical details, but honestly,
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  Speaker 1: none of those will be as exciting to you as
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  Speaker 1: what happened to him in nineteen o eight, a year Earlier,
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen o seven, George was part of a small
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  Speaker 1: group of military officials who established the Aeronautical Division of
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  Speaker 1: the U. S. Signal Corps. It was a branch of
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  Speaker 1: the military that focused entirely on heavier than air flight. Naturally,
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  Speaker 1: they were very interested in the work of the Wright Brothers,
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  Speaker 1: who had managed to succeed at powered flight back in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o three. After their victory at Kitty Hawk, the
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  Speaker 1: Wright Brothers toiled away on newer and better versions of
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  Speaker 1: their planes Think iron Man, constantly tinkering with improvements and additions,
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  Speaker 1: and never fully satisfied with the status quo. But by
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o eight they had something they were willing to sell,
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  Speaker 1: and George's group in the U. S. Military wanted to
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  Speaker 1: buy it. On September twelfth of nineteen o eight, George
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  Speaker 1: found himself inside one of those planes, the Right Flyer,
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  Speaker 1: as it flew over the Earth, and in doing so
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  Speaker 1: he became one of the first passengers to ever ride
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  Speaker 1: in an airplane, and certainly the first member of the
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  Speaker 1: military to do so. After that, he worked hard to
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  Speaker 1: seal the deal buying the first airplanes for the U. S. Army.
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  Speaker 1: Not bad for a bragworthy first, right Today, someone like
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  Speaker 1: George would roll that experience into a popular Instagram account
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  Speaker 1: and become an influencer. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, though,
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  Speaker 1: it was just part of his job and there was
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  Speaker 1: plenty more to do, because, you see, George was more
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  Speaker 1: than a military officer. He was an inventor as well.
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  Speaker 1: Years earlier, he had helped invent a device called the
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  Speaker 1: Magneto optical street camera. It was used to measure the
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  Speaker 1: speed of projectiles. He also dabbled in studies of electricity,
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  Speaker 1: radio waves, and the telegraph system, and in nineteen ten
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  Speaker 1: he developed a new technology for the telephone, allowing a
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  Speaker 1: single telephone cable to carry multiple phone calls at once,
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  Speaker 1: rather than just one at a time. But his biggest
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  Speaker 1: legacy is probably one you've never noticed, even if it's
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  Speaker 1: always been there. You see, back in nineteen eleven, he
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  Speaker 1: took that idea about multiple calls on a single telephone
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  Speaker 1: line and adapted it for radio signals. Basically, he figured
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  Speaker 1: out how to send multiple signals over a single electrical line,
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  Speaker 1: and he called it wired wireless. It was revolutionary. When
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  Speaker 1: most people think of radio today, they think of radio
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  Speaker 1: waves passing invisibly through the air, and to switch stations
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  Speaker 1: you needed to tune your receiver to a different frequency.
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  Speaker 1: But back in the nineteen twenties that was expensive and
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  Speaker 1: it required a lot of complicated equipment. George's invention promised
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  Speaker 1: to get around all that though, using a customer's own
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  Speaker 1: electrical line, a whole range of stations could be hyped
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  Speaker 1: directly into their location, and by the early nineteen thirties,
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  Speaker 1: the ideal customer for his product was the thousands of
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  Speaker 1: businesses all around America. It was music uninterrupted by flakey
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  Speaker 1: radio waves for an inexpensive monthly charge. It was cable TV,
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  Speaker 1: but for radio. Long before cable TV was ever a thing.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, the typical radio world grew and expanded quickly,
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  Speaker 1: making George's invention less and less necessary. But despite that,
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  Speaker 1: there always seemed to be a need for reliable, consistent,
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  Speaker 1: always on music in certain types of businesses, namely restaurants
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  Speaker 1: and hotels. After all, elevators weren't very friendly to radio waves,
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  Speaker 1: but George's wired radio worked perfectly. Today, his invention is
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  Speaker 1: giving way to internet radio, still sold by subscription and
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  Speaker 1: transmitted over cables like George envisioned a century ago. But
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  Speaker 1: despite the product itself fading into the past, George Owen
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  Speaker 1: squares name War, it seemed to have embedded itself into
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  Speaker 1: popular culture as the epitome of boring instrumental music you
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  Speaker 1: might encounter in an elevator his company music. There is
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  Speaker 1: a great, big world out there with wonders just waiting
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  Speaker 1: to be discovered. For European men of wealth in the
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  Speaker 1: seventeenth and eighteen centuries, those wonders were often seen during
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  Speaker 1: a trip known as the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour
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  Speaker 1: was a rite of passage for young men coming of age.
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  Speaker 1: They would travel throughout Europe and even into Asia, learning
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  Speaker 1: about art and music, studying new language, and doing braggworthy
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  Speaker 1: things like climbing the Alps. But it wasn't all academic.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, as the practice wore on, it became more
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  Speaker 1: of a shopping trip than an educational expedition. Rich men
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  Speaker 1: from England and Ireland would purchase our works and objects
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  Speaker 1: from far away and bring them home to show off
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  Speaker 1: to their peers. This was how other cultures worked their
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  Speaker 1: way into European architectural styles and art movements. But the
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  Speaker 1: trips weren't just about material possessions. They were also about
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  Speaker 1: seeing things you could only read about in books. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: all good things must come to an end, and grand
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  Speaker 1: tours usually lasted just a few months to a couple
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  Speaker 1: of years at the most. But there was a path
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  Speaker 1: for those who wanted to extend their grand tours and
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  Speaker 1: spend their lives traveling the world, taking in new sites.
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  Speaker 1: They went into the priesthood. That was the path Arthur
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  Speaker 1: O'Leary took during the seventeen hundreds. O'Leary was born in
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  Speaker 1: seventeen twenty nine in County Cork, Ireland. He came into
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  Speaker 1: the world during a difficult time for his country, a
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  Speaker 1: time when penal laws had been enacted against Irish Catholics
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  Speaker 1: and Protestants. The goal had been to push them towards
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  Speaker 1: the Church of Ireland. These laws made living in the
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  Speaker 1: country difficult for a lot of people. O'Leary took his
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  Speaker 1: leave as soon as he was able and moved to France.
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  Speaker 1: He became a priest, not only preaching but writing on
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  Speaker 1: the topics of religion and politics as well, for which
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  Speaker 1: he became well known. He also gained notoriety for walking everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't take carriages or travel on horseback. O'Leary traveled
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  Speaker 1: on foot. As one writer put it, he used to
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  Speaker 1: walk from the convent of St. Malow to the feet
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  Speaker 1: of the Pyrenees. It was during this one particular stroll
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  Speaker 1: in the north of France when his lifelong grand tour
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  Speaker 1: took a strange turn. He'd been visiting the Bologna so
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  Speaker 1: Mere and walking along the water when he came across
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  Speaker 1: an impromptu performance. A brown bear on a leash had
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  Speaker 1: captivated a group of spectators. With prodding from its handler,
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  Speaker 1: the bear performed all kinds of tricks. It would count
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  Speaker 1: with its paw and indicate the hour of the day
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  Speaker 1: when shown a clock. If a member of the audience
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  Speaker 1: waved to it, the bear would nod in their direction,
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  Speaker 1: or even bow in reverence. Father O'Leary returned a few
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  Speaker 1: more times to see the bear perform, but something struck
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  Speaker 1: him as odd. On his final day in town, the
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  Speaker 1: bear seemed tired, resting between tricks, despite its owner poking
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  Speaker 1: it with a stick. The crowd was insatiable. They kept
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  Speaker 1: throwing money at the handler, demanding more from the bear.
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  Speaker 1: At one point, the creature seemed to have had enough,
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  Speaker 1: and when its owner poked it yet again, it stood
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  Speaker 1: up and let out a guttural roar, But it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: the roar a bear would make. It sounded like words,
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  Speaker 1: words that nobody but Father O'Leary could understand. The bear
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  Speaker 1: was speaking the Irish language of Gilga. This was the
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  Speaker 1: most amazing trick anyone had seen yet, a bear that
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  Speaker 1: could talk. So Father O'Leary called out to it and
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  Speaker 1: the two had a short conversation in their native tongue.
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  Speaker 1: O'Leary soon left to track down the mayor of the town,
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  Speaker 1: who he insisted should have a chat with the bear
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  Speaker 1: as well. It was at that point that the handler
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  Speaker 1: abandoned the animal and ran off. As it turns out,
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  Speaker 1: the bear hadn't been a bear at all. He had
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  Speaker 1: started out as a man just trying to survive. He
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  Speaker 1: had come by boat from the town of Waterford in Ireland,
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  Speaker 1: where food had been in short supply. On its way
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  Speaker 1: to Spain, the boat had capsized and the man was
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  Speaker 1: rescued by fisherman. Once on land, though, they sewed him
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  Speaker 1: into a bear costume and took him to France, where
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  Speaker 1: they forced him to perform for people on the street.
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  Speaker 1: Rather than pay him money, they gave him food the
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  Speaker 1: one thing he had wanted more than anything else, and
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  Speaker 1: it was the promise that he'd be fed after each
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  Speaker 1: performance that had kept him in the costume for so long.
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  Speaker 1: I know, performing for strangers in a bear costume might
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  Speaker 1: seem intolerable to most, but for one man at least,
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  Speaker 1: it was worth it because the thought of going hungry
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  Speaker 1: it was much more unbearable. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,